Redefining ties with China

THERE are indications that Pakistan is more aware than a couple of years ago of the complexity of the unfolding international situation. It is reflected in a new quest for a more diversified foreign policy. While this would mean exploring avenues that have not received full attention before, its main vector would doubtless be the consolidation and expansion of time-tested friendships.

Inevitably, China is the centrepiece of fresh initiatives and it would be fair to say that the Sino-Pakistan relationship is poised to enter a period of enhanced salience. It will be a period of great promise and some peril as it is predicated on a certain reading of how global power would be distributed in the years to come.

Pakistan is beginning to recover from the misplaced euphoria of becoming once again a front line state in a US-led coalition in the region. Catch phrases like a non-Nato ally of the United States and claims of an entente with the sole superpower of our times that from now on would never be subject to expediency or erosion had a strange self-hypnotic effect; the foreign policy establishment of Pakistan looked like a mere implementing arm of a decision-making machine that stood in no particular need of its counsel or experience.

Pakistan has had a long history of interaction with the United States; in fact it spans virtually all the 60 post-independence years. For most of the time, it was a complex interaction. Pakistan benefited a great deal in certain areas during some of the phases of what, by definition, was always an unequal and fluctuating alliance. It is doubtful if without this alliance, bilateral as in the 1959 treaty or multilateral as in the military pacts of 1954, Pakistan would have ever been able to raise armed forces of such size and strength.

It is also true that this assistance conferred no great leverage on Pakistan in settling issues with India on equitable terms. It might even have been counter-productive in this context. Furthermore, from time to time, Pakistan was punished hard and in some instances its interests were irreparably hurt.

On its part, Pakistan too endeavoured to maintain a policy that reflected much compliance and some selective defiance. The opening to China in the mid-1960s and the single-minded pursuit of the nuclear weapon capability after India demonstrated it in the 1970s are obvious examples of that assertion of national interest.

The team that took President Pervez Musharraf headlong into the war on terror without even a minimum effort to negotiate mutually beneficial terms of engagement was, however, notably characterised by a servile imagination. There were apprehensions in Pakistan that its foreign policy may have become hopelessly lopsided and that, more ominously, Pakistan may miss a correct view of the cross-currents of international politics in a period of major changes. In aligning itself with one turn of the tide, it may just blink on the tides to follow.

It is said that you cannot speak authentically about the future because it has not happened as yet. But an honest appraisal of the past and present does help map out the space and time in which the drama of future events would be enacted. It is not a precise science but the strategic context for coming developments can be discussed intelligently.

Perhaps one should venture to share one’s private crystal gazing with one’s readers on a relatively reckless day. It may, however, be in order to mention some of the more obvious conjectures relevant to this piece here.

One, the events of the first seven years of the 21st century foreshadow a long period of instability. Two, the journey towards a multipolar world would not be smooth; it is likely to take place in an environment of continuous friction and conflict. Third, the Cold War alternatives of two sharply antagonistic economic strategies would not return; global economy will develop at an accelerated pace and it will continue to be driven by the western capitalistic model.

Four, this rapid growth under the rubric of globalisation will be uneven and will almost certainly exacerbate inequalities. Fifth, disparities will intensify strife much of which would take the form of asymmetrical warfare and terrorism. Sixth, countries like Pakistan are situated in stress zones where metropolitan powers will not hesitate to change partners arbitrarily. In Pakistan’s specific case, India will most probably become a greater focus of American interest and support. All the talk about a long-haul collaboration with Washington may fade away before long.

The world of tomorrow will be a chequered board of interdependence and rivalry. The most important theatre for working out this dialectic would be the scramble for natural resources. Energy should be expected to be the pivot of the new and perhaps a more ruthless Great Game. Pakistan has been unsuccessfully trying to position itself appropriately for it since the early 1990s only to see Afghanistan wrecking most of its initiatives.

By making itself a major candidate to be an energy corridor, Pakistan is at once reiterating its heavy stake in this game and also opening itself to new pressures and threats. At the heart of this project lies the Sino-Pakistan friendship.

A potentially dramatic factor in the emerging scene is the new Pakistani deep sea port of Gwadar in which the Chinese have invested $200 million. In fact, some observers are already talking about the new Great Game centring on this port. Pakistan, they argue, may be setting off “alarm bells in Washington” that may impact on the current Pakistan-US alliance.

Suggesting that Gwadar is indicative of how Chinese largesse is coming into open competition with the US, one American analyst has this to say : “The more money China dishes out, the more Pakistan is likely to gravitate towards Beijing as a countervail to US influence, given that Islamabad is increasingly pummelled to do more in the war on terrorism”. If sovereign decision-making becomes an irritant in Pakistan-US relations, history would have come full circle reminding Pakistan of the hostility experienced as Ayub Khan went to Beijing to open that great window for his beleaguered country.

There are formidable problems in creating an all-weather corridor from Gwadar to Xinjiang through Pakistan’s majestic mountain ranges but, if successful, the project will hugely reduce the distance and expense, making China a very serious player in a region that the United States traditionally dominates. Pakistan is the geopolitical hub for bringing China, the Gulf including Iran and Africa into a thriving economic interaction.

Mr Shaukat Aziz’s visit to China shows that his hosts were willing to make the enterprise worthwhile for Pakistan by further diversifying cooperation. China is ready to make a large investment in Pakistan’s chronically weak manufacturing sector. It is also the only worthwhile partner of Pakistan in defence technology and production. Already, the strong differentiation made by the United States between Pakistan and India on the question of transferring sophisticated American technology for peaceful nuclear energy programmes has become an argument for enhancing relations with Beijing.

China is the only country in the world that has helped set up a nuclear power reactor and may be open to Pakistani requests for more reactors. More than 20 agreements in the public and private sectors have been signed during Shaukat Aziz’s latest visit to China. If the trade target set out in Beijing is achieved, it would easily become a major transformational factor in Pakistan’s economy. One could not also miss the clear security symbolism of many of his engagements.

Washington is not indifferent to Pakistan’s looming energy crisis or, for that matter, its economic growth. But it favours solutions that remain subordinate to its global agenda. It opposes the eminently feasible Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which offers the additional advantage of giving India and Pakistan a joint stake in regional peace.

It is, however, willing to help promote a gas pipeline to South Asia from Turkmenistan and a hydroelectric power grid from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan, projects which are today vulnerable to instability in Afghanistan. Turkmenistan’s ability to supply gas in quantity after its recent agreements with the Russian Federation also has a question mark.

Conscious of being the greatest ever military power, the United States has tried to pre-empt history through the Bush era doctrines of pre-emptive military interventions. So far, the results have been catastrophic. The destruction of Iraq has led some states to seek nuclear deterrence and many more to accelerate the dawn of a multipolar world order. It is highly unlikely that American military might can overcome varied forms of resistance and revolt.

Confronted with this dilemma, the United States should not be expected to regard any alliance outside the inner circle of western power as sacrosanct. The present alliance with Pakistan remains as dependent upon unilateral American perceptions of the need for it as in the past. It is high time Pakistan outgrows the habit of lamenting changes of policy and preference considered necessary by an increasingly embattled United States.

Against the chequered backdrop of past alliances, Pakistani diplomacy faces the challenge of persuading the United States that Pakistan needs to supplement its American connection with a robust regional role anchored in a special relationship with China.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

The reference and its fallout

THERE just doesn’t appear to be an end to the judicial crisis. And by the looks of things the protests don’t show the slightest sign of abating, even though the agitation has lost some of its bite, and the protests have now taken the form of hourly boycotts of the courts, the odd protest strike and the occasional threat by an overzealous advocate to end his temporal existence.

But just when the crisis appeared to look like a straightforward two-way contest between the Chief Justice and the head of state — the Supreme Court added another dimension and turned the contest into a triangle. The reference against the president came as a surprise, adding all sorts of complications.

In a sense, the present state of affairs — the protests, the violence, the organised resistance — is totally against the norm. In recent times, the country has witnessed a number of upheavals. But in spite of the heat and rancour they might have generated, the dissent eventually subsided. There might have been that one final burst of vigour, that one last flicker of resistance, but eventually the protest petered out. This time the lawyers are rewriting history.

The more one thinks of it, the more one wonders what had gotten into the president for doing what he did and for rocking the boat. Things were progressing fairly smoothly for the government in an administrative set-up Galbraith would have described as ‘functional anarchy.’

Moored in the slow tides of flat calm afternoons, the government, whenever it had assembled for the dreary task of enacting new laws, nevertheless embarked on a programme designed for public edification, which while it unfolded in fits and jerks, at least had the semblance of ushering in some sort of development and progress.

The fact that it managed to do this in spite of displaying a rare penchant for getting its priorities wrong, and for indulging in reckless extravagance, nevertheless managed to come across to certain people as a reasonable alternative to the political governments that had preceded it.

And then came the reference — and all hell broke loose. Local television channels had a field day while the public was riveted to the television screen. There were the retired judges and the practising lawyers, hurling shafts of legal insight into the discussions. There were the men of the cloth, weighed down heavily with the barnacles of reverence, spewing out single entendres against the president. And there were the senior journalists, distilling the ugly mood of the people with a candour never seen before.

Except for the odd government stooge, what all the speakers shared was a round condemnation of the president’s action. One of the retired judges ventured to suggest that the situation could have been mollified, if not altogether rescued, if the president had apologised to the nation – as he had done when a platoon of helmeted policemen vandalised the office of a local television channel. All he then had to do was pass the buck over to the judicial council and wash his hands off the affair. It was really that simple.

Another suggested that the reference could have been withdrawn. This the president was not prepared to do, for it would have shown that he had succumbed to threats from special pressure groups and didn’t know his own mind.. Instead, much to the ire of the lawyers and the public, he indulged in a self-righteous piece of rationalising and is now faced with the worst crisis in his seven-year stewardship of this impoverished country. Just how he is going to squirm out of the latest action by the Supreme Court is anybody’s guess.

In trying to wriggle out of a sticky situation the president had the support of a clutch of speakers. The defence was led by the minister of information, who television viewers remember as the man who stood by silently as government goons defaced a television station, giving the erroneous impression that he was orchestrating the onslaught. It included a former talk show host with a law degree named Naeem Bokhari, who torched the fuse in the first place, and who, if he is to be believed, knows just about everybody who matters in the legal fraternity. The nation also heard the former baron of the country’s rolling stock, Sheikh Rashid, who managed to get a word in edgeways in his two-stroke voice.

The opposition then chipped in, for opportunities like this don’t present themselves every day. Initially, the men and women in the black coats wanted no truck with the axis who were cashing in on the ugly mood in the country. But there is a good reason for this. The lawyers, whatever their politics might be, see their agitation as essentially a struggle for the independence of the judiciary, and not as a vehicle for changing the political system.

Cavorting with the opposition might, therefore, give the movement political overtones which would derail from the basic theme of getting the Chief Justice reinstated. There is also an inherent danger of the movement being hijacked by the parties of the two leaders currently in exile. And then the lawyers, quite inexplicably, turned to members of the opposition and asked them to join in their struggle for the restoration of the independence of the judiciary.

The political fallout of the president’s action has resulted in some interesting developments. Not only has it united rival factions in the Supreme Court Bar Council, it has united lawyers across the country. The action has also galvanised the opposition dedicated to the overthrow of a system dominated by the presence of the military which has entrenched itself during the last seven years and obtained a firm foothold in the country. And it has stoked the embers of the rumour that there actually is some sort of tacit understanding between President Musharraf and the Daughter of the East.

The stories which are now circulating about the need for finding a scapegoat must be giving the prime minister sleepless nights, for he is the obvious target, especially as he is the person who advised the president to do what he did.

But one must admire the prime minister’s composure. He remains unruffled as he continues to appoint the wrong people in the country’s essential service industries, talks about setting up billion dollar medical complexes for the rich, and continues to emote the sort of new age profundity one finds in the brochures of Arizona health spas.

The president, on the other hand, finds himself in the prickly discomfort of a man who discovers angry ramblers in the footpath through his front lawn. On television he appears beleaguered and a little drawn and is probably disturbed by the fact that his addresses on the glass bucket are not evoking the kind of response he evoked five years ago.

What he doesn’t realise is that the bearded and turbaned man sitting cross-legged under the speaker’s rostrum in Gwadar probably doesn’t care one way or the other if the Chief Justice swings or is reinstated or if the Supreme Court chucks out the application that would disallow a Hindu judge from administering the oath of office to the president.

But it might have occurred to him that while government ministers have been traipsing all over the world in useless and pointless endeavours at the country’s expense, President Musharraf’s government hasn’t added a single kilowatt of electricity to the country’s turbines in the period it has been in

power.

The pinpricks that different sections of American public opinion and representatives of the US government administer on a regular basis are also finding their mark. ‘We’d like to see transparency in the next election.’ What this really means is ‘We’d like to see Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif back in harness leading their troops to the hustings.’

It is the other one, however, the one about giving up the uniform, that must be giving the president anxious moments, especially now that he has stated that Pakistan might consider pulling out of the coalition that is fighting the war on terror.

Whatever might be the outcome of the decision of the judicial council — which the president has on more than one occasion asserted he would unconditionally accept — it is now widely felt that there is a need for change and for getting back to introducing a democratic polity which reflects the true wishes of the denizens of this blighted republic.

The meltdown started a number of years ago. If it is not arrested the avalanche might once again threaten the stability of the system. And then it might be too late.

Aspects of the judicial crisis

IT IS slightly ridiculous for someone heading an institution that routinely brings its politics to drink at waters judicial to chide the public and professional politicians for politicising judicial process. Did President General Musharraf make his own mistaken reference on March 9 or was he persuaded into it?

Having played ducks and drakes with the Constitution since October 1999 (starting out with no judicial cover whatsoever) self-confidence may well have led the president into overplaying what seemed like a winning suit.

After all the Supreme Court was a bastion that had the precedent of having been stormed and everyone went meekly home afterwards including the Chief Justice. Only this time it was not the sanctity of the building that was being breached but the sanctity of office personified in the Chief Justice. And the whole infrastructure of the bar met the initial stress.

Undeniable if unspoken public endorsement of the bar’s stand and abiding concerns about rights and freedoms have made a symbol of the Chief Justice. Extensive discussion in terms of what actually ails or heals the body politic was immediate and inevitable. The response transcends the bounds of courts and chambers, camp offices and secretariats and is a debate birthed of public necessity. To push it underground would be the unhealthiest as well as the most impolitic of moves.

For the people it is not a matter of whether the Chief Justice exploited privilege or his son prospered on parental good office rather than merit. If Pakistanis could even hope the highest in the land had their wings clipped and came under scrutiny for such actions they would still be cheering. Of more credible if ulterior motivation is his conduct as related to a superior judiciary that was in two unavoidably high profile cases (the Steel Mill and missing persons) functioning apparently independent of the executive and the legislature or whatever chimera is conjoined in a COAS/president and a Citibank-breed prime minister.

The court’s rulings were popularly hailed as protecting the public exchequer and the sadly vulnerable common citizen. Was a judge being shown it was judicious not to meddle with vested interests?

From one point of view it is very simple: either the Chief Justice or the president will be vindicated by the council. Yet in neither case will matters end for a disturbed public. For what they see at stake is a principle: is Pakistan to be ruled – let us shun rude words like junta, cabal, usurpers – by a government that derives its writ by force of arms or by one that is vested in the free consensus of its citizens as enshrined in its Constitution?

It took the fall of Dhaka to make bickering Pakistanis recognise the need to accommodate each other within constitutional bounds and thereafter reach consensus on a fresh constitution for what remained of the country. By creeping amendments, by politicians who were false to the spirit of the document even when installed democratically amid much popular confidence by self-fulfilling declarations of emergency, PCOs, ordinances duly rubber-stamped by pathetic parliamentarians we have arrived at our present state.

Curiously, although their cases did not necessarily engender respect, military dictators elevated the Supreme Court. Whatever it rightly judged for them was recognised as nationally binding. In democratic interludes too, political destinies were determined by the court when upholding or invalidating the application of the Eighth Amendment. That helps explain why the “judges case” or the prime minister’s power to list nominations was considered pivotal.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has a historical context of ruling on life or death for an ousted and subsequently indicted prime minister whose popularity threatened a military usurper’s forward march. It has the potential to validate or review treason allocations in a clash between the COAS and the prime minister. Conversation between a former law minister and serving judge exist on tape. To reapply President Musharraf’s truism about democratic form and essence, the essence of the judiciary was politicised long ago. Was the form of independence approaching crystallisation when a very political attempt was made to incapacitate the presiding Chief Justice?

The public has gained the wisdom to beware of mass agitations which previously opened the door on martial law. But what dynamic then remains for change? General Musharraf’s self-styled democracy is one where the barriers guarding the platforms of normal political party opposition are only lifted for surrogates. Much is asked of the bar, which, from within a legal bubble, is waging the citizens’ struggle to regain the Constitution and an independent judiciary.

The professional body has kept its protest ordered. But as it prolongs there may be deliberate disruptive intrusions. The press and electronic media have a vital role in keeping the impalpable connection between the bar and public sentiment vibrant.

In contrast to feeble efforts by other parties, the MQM led a grandly satisfying rally in Karachi against religious compulsion. That should mean a great deal except that Mr Altaf Hussain could give the call and have it implemented to stage rally on the same scale in support of anything in Karachi. Nonetheless if progressive NGOs and professional bodies find a mightier champion in the MQM than in the officially constrained mainstream parties it would pragmatically extend the scope of cultist leadership and the military’s king-making outfit.

The present ambience provides mainstream party leaders a linkage with public opinion that has already mobilised on a national issue, but the opportunity has its snares. They can easily seem to be in a scrimmage for power, exploiting the cause rather than serving it. It would be a grave error and a betrayal of popular expectation to make pre-electoral deals with establishment forces. The reactivation of the PML(N) and PPP under their true leadership is a prerequisite to democratic normalising. But towards that end they – like everyone else – have to come through the litmus test of convincing and transparent national elections.

Should such elections yield a hung parliament or distinct pluralities that will be the time for open deals and mutual concession: not with presidents and army chiefs with but with the diversity of democratic aspiration reflecting a polity military rule has brought too close to implosion.

Until the present regime accepts this unpleasant reality and sets about amending that rather than the Constitution, social volatility will persist no matter what the fate of the reference.

Deadline for Darfur

GIVEN the last half-decade of deceit and misery in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the international community's repeated broken promises to do something about it, it seems cruel to ask the 2.5 million refugees there to wait a few more weeks while the UN weighs its options. Yet that's exactly what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked for — and the Bush administration is rightly inclined to give him the time.

The new wrinkle is that China is newly engaged on this issue, a welcome development. Also, the government of Sudan has reversed its position of a month ago and accepted the deployment of an additional 3,000 UN peacekeepers. Whether Khartoum means to honour the deal it signed in November to allow a 22,000-member UN-African Union peacekeeping force into Darfur remains an open question, and at any rate, it's unlikely that the additional forces will be sufficient to protect the millions needing protection or the 13,000 besieged relief workers trying to feed them.

Still, President Bush's special envoy on Sudan, Andrew S. Natsios, told the Senate that the US has agreed to a request by Ban to delay imposing stiffer economic sanctions on Sudan for two to four weeks to give diplomacy time to work. The UN hopes to broker talks between 15 rebel groups and Khartoum. Natsios credited quiet pressure from China, a major customer for Sudan's oil, for Khartoum's about-face.

— Los Angeles Times